


Reminescence

by supplimint



Category: Black Survival (Video Game)
Genre: Background Character Death, Body Horror, Character Study, Gen, Gore, Introspection, Research Journal Background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 07:42:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14972363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supplimint/pseuds/supplimint
Summary: Hyejin wakes up after a trial and introspects on the dues she owes and the duties she still carries.





	Reminescence

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged it mild gore but I'm not sure if it should be just Gore or not. Hrmmm.....
> 
> Please leave a kudo/comment if you liked this fic! Getting feedback instead of just a +1 hit really helps with writing future fics!

She becomes conscious almost all at once, jolting fully awake when she registers the emerging feeling from deep sleep. _What’s going on, why was she sleeping, didn’t she know any better from all the past ambushes?_

She scrabbles for her bow on the ground but her hands meet cheap bedsheets instead. Hyejin slumps, her previous panic melting away as she registers that she’s safe now, with no Ms. Quilt prowling around, or Ms. Gro systematically searching the area.

Her heart is still hammering away in her chest, and she’s hyper-aware of the fragile organ furiously thumping, trapped inside a rib cage which gave way in just five swings of a spiked baseball bat. Mr. Scott wasted no time in eliminating her, which Hyejin supposes she should count herself lucky. It was Fate that she was blindsided by the gangster while repairing her head injury and felt her skin tear away in rapid succession, each blow shearing off chunks of flesh as the bat caved in her chest and sent shards of bone through her heart. She had still been conscious then, but had managed to gargle the blood in her throat so Mr. Scott could finish her off quickly.

She steadies her stuttered breathing, _inoutinoutinoutin out i-in out in out in, out in, out, in, out…_

She was lucky, she reminds herself, that she died in mostly one piece and not thirty scattered across the terrain _._ It was Fate that she was disadvantaged from the start of the trial and lost, but at least she lost quickly. _Thank you, Fate._

 

Hyejin stands on shaky legs and starts going through the stretches that a kind-enough researcher taught her to improve her post-resurrection coordination. She thanks Fate for that, too.

She thanks Fate for giving her a body that works well on its own, and that it was reconstructed without any problems again. She thanks Fate that her family will be safe from her curse now, that it brought her to the island with a facility that acquiesces sufficient accommodations and fellow subjects who, for the most part, are neutral if not friendly. She thanks Fate that she has the right mindset to live on the island, strong enough to withstand the pressures and not have her memories wiped, and she thanks Fate that she was dispatched in only five blows and not by someone who puts more work into relishing the kill.

Hyejin goes to the small closet to retrieve the clothes afforded to her that are sturdier than the hospital gown. _Thank you, Fate._ She reaches into the back of the closet and brings out a bundle of incense and its accompanying pot. _Thank you, Fate._ She fetches the brush and inkstone from the desk that the researchers also allowed her, as well as sheets of rice paper. _Thank you, Fate._

She carefully places the sheets on the desk and grinds the inkstone, producing a growing pool of jet black ink that smells of the woods around her family shrine. When the ink laps the top edge of the inkstone, Hyejin lays the inkstick down and picks up her brush, carefully and solemnly, and begins to inscribe the names of every classmate who died in her middle school field trip. Her class’s bus had flipped over whilst she was stranded at the previous gas station. She didn’t see the scene of the crime, but she might as well have when she was later summoned to the morgue to identify their bodies.

* * *

 

There had been crime scene investigators at the morgue, murmuring about how a bus in near-perfect condition had flipped. There was a rainstorm when the bus had swerved to avoid a fallen trunk, but the storm was nowhere heavy enough to obscure visibility for the driver to turn breakneck, and the brakes were found to have been cleanly cut.

They had asked her if there were any signs of what was about to happen, or anything or anybody suspicious. _It's my curse,_ she'd said, but of course no one believed her. _What do you mean, curse? Did someone say that you were cursed? Did you see them recently around your school?_

They left her alone after countless fruitless attempts when their colleague had stepped in. _It’s clearly survivor’s guilt. Leave her alone for now, we need her help in tagging who’s who._

She eventually was left to identify the bodies in a different section of the morgue, separated from the parents who wailed or could do little more than whimper, clutching each other or the edges of their child's shroud. The shrouds themselves were blackened on the inside, soot and ash and entire stretches of charred skin rubbing off on the cloth. They felt alien to her, those cocoons enveloping her classmates. All that they were, all that they did, yelling, bouncing, taunting - it was just _stopped_ , and it left them so much smaller than Hyejin could have ever imagined.

The bodies that were still exhumed were grotesque and pitiful. Their school uniforms were burned onto the bodies, their plastic watches and wristbands etched onto their arms, and those who died screaming showed that their braces were warped. Hyejin had stared at the bodies uncomprehendingly, eyes passing from one to another. She was the one with the curse, but they had paid the price. _Thank...you... Fate...?_

She was staring at the eyes of a boy who's staring up at the ceiling with his clouded cataracts that lay in fleshy, shriveled sockets. He was all red then, red skin and red scraps of skin flaking off of him, red sockets that belie terribly white pupils and a band of lighter red on his wrist.

 

A heavy hand had thudded on her shoulder. _I know it's been a hard day, but can you tell us who they were, sweetie? You don't have to be certain, just tell us who it could be._

Hyejin's attention floated down to the boy's wrist with the clouded pigment. He had boasted about it, she remembers. Shoved it in everyone's face and bragged that it was the latest model of some foreign brand and that his father, a company COO, had it imported all the way from Italy. The rest of the country would see it hit the shelves only two weeks later. _Dongmin Kim,_ she said.

 _You sure, sweetie? Alright, thank you. What about the girl next to him?_ The investigator had pointed to a girl with her hands fused to her face, as if she died in denial of the fire.

Hyejin's lips almost twitched into a flash of a smile. There was a girl in her class who was a follower and a scaredy-cat. Every time without fail, she would jump at the sight of her, no matter the distance between them. Once, Hyejin had accidentally snuck up on her on her way to archery club and Hyejin was heading home, and the girl had squeaked and squeezed her eyes shut as if Hyejin was one of the urban legend ghosts who couldn't see her if she didn't see _her._

_I know it's hard since we can't see her face. Would it help if we said that she was found with the girl next to her hugging her? She's blonde, look._

Hyejin did, and it had been the girl's friend who was fiercely overprotective of her, previously glossy hair that then disintegrated at a touch. The friend had found the girl trembling while Hyejin looked on bemusedly.

 

_You fucking freak! Who do you think you are? Get the fuck away from her or I'll beat the shit out of you, you psycho ghost-bitch!_

Hyejin had barely suppressed a flinch then and murmured that cursing brought bad luck.

_Bitch, are you fucking threatening me? Get your ass away from Jihye and me right now or I'll fucking kill you! Piece of shit!_

 

Hyejin points to them. _Jihye Kim, and Jiyoung Cho._

 _Alright, thank you sweetie, how about..._  

 

It had gone on like that for the next thirty minutes, Hyejin uttering their names over their prone bodies, like a final judgment over their mutilated selves.

 _Sangjin Woo, Minsuh Lee, Chewon Kim, Junoo Kim, Yujoon Kang, Haeun Kim, Suhjoon Park, Siwoo Jung, Jiwoo Jung, Suah Kim, Daeun Park, Harin Lee._  

_Alright, thank you sweetie You’ve done all you could for the day. Why don’t you go on home now and take a rest._

 

* * *

She etched their names into her mind that day, those she identified and those she didn’t have to, repeating them over and over until she felt paralyzed by their weight. Thirty-two names that she would repeat as memorandum as her atonement for what Fate had brought upon them for her curse.

Hyejin guides the brush provided to her by the research institute _—_ thank you, Fate _—_ through the last of her classmates' names. _Seok...jin... Jang..._ Each stroke is as deliberate as the curse that took their lives. She surveys the sheet of rice paper, now filled from edge to edge with the names of the dead she's responsible for, and sets it against the wall. She reads it and mutters the names to herself one last time.

The empty pot and the bundle of incense lay to the side till then, for the end of the preparations. Hyejin takes thirty-two sticks, pronouncing each individual incense to be for each classmate, and places them in the pot. Taking special care of two incense rods, she places Jihye's and Jiyoung's to be beside each other.

She takes a deep breath _—_

_Sangjin Woo, Minsuh Lee, Chewon Kim, Junoo Kim, Yujoon Kang, Haeun Kim, Suhjoon Park, Siwoo Jung, Jiwoo Jung, Suah Kim, Daeun Park, Harin Lee, Ujin Liu, Iseul Lee, Nara Park, Junsuh Lee, Hajun Cho, Yejoon Kim, Nayeh Kim, Hayoon Cho, Suhhyun Moon, Suhyun Moon, Jieu Liu, Doeun Lee, Eunsung Moon, Yoonyoo Kang, Daeh Jung, Lieh Woo, Subin Park, Lihyun Jang, Jia Lee, Suhah Kim_

_—_ and lights the incense.


End file.
